If you've read my review of Johnny English, you'll know that I'm a big fan of Rowan Atkinson (the physical comedy genius who plays Mr. Bean) but seldom do I get to enjoy his efforts on the silver screen due to the underwhelming material he's often given to work with. I have to say that I greatly enjoyed the first Mr. Bean movie but in the ten years since its premiere there have been few feature films able to adequately harness Mr. Atkinson's gift (the only two that come close in my mind would be Rat Race and Keeping Mum). That's why when I heard that another Mr. Bean movie was in the works, I was ecstatic. Surely this would be the return to hilarity I'd been anxiously waiting for.
If you've seen the BBC TV series Mr. Bean or Blackadder, then you know the kind of amazing and hilarious performances Mr. Atkinson is capable of. Sitting though Mr. Bean's Holiday made me wish that Mr. Bean had just stayed at home, not just at home in England, but at home on TV as well.
Mr. Bean's Holiday isn't an awful film (like Johnny English) but it's a sad testament to the fact that no one seems to know how to fully exploit Mr. Atkinson's talents anymore. In Mr. Bean's Holiday it's painfully obvious that people are running out of ideas. The character's first movie, simply titled "Bean," had several segments in it lifted straight from the TV series similar to Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different. In Mr. Bean's Holiday, segments like Mr. Bean trying to cheer up a child on the train were lifted from a very similar scene not only in the TV series but in the first movie as well.
It isn't too long into the movie before the script tells the audience that it's run out of ideas by starting to pair Bean up with other characters, first a kid who joins him on his journey, then a young woman who becomes a kind of love interest. Geez, about all that's left is a wise-cracking character of differing race (who teaches him how to be "cool") and maybe a talking dog or orangutan of some kind. In Mr. Bean's Holiday, having these kind of "sidekick" characters around plays out just as awkwardly as you'd expect it to.
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